Maytas Infra appoints Vimal Kaushik as CEO

City-based Maytas Infra appointed Vimal Kaushik as its managing director and chief executive officer (CEO). The company approved the appointment of Kaushik in a board meeting today.

The company, which was promoted by the kin of Satyam founder B Ramalinga Raju, went into crisis following Raju's confession of inflating the balance sheet of Satyam. The company did not have a chief executive after interim CEO B Teja Raju, son of Ramalinga Raju, quit due to the crisis at the company. The operations were manned by presidents that the company appointed.

Kaushik, the new CEO, is an electrical engineer and had worked with Punj Lloyd, as managing director. He was there with the company for almost four decades and handled verticals of pipelines, tankages and turnkey oil and gas mega projects.

Maytas suffered collateral damage for being a company run by the family of Satyam founder. Since last year, it has been on a roller coaster ride and lost many projects, including the prestigious Rs 12,132-crore Hyderabad Metro Rail Project and others. As a result, several staff quit the organisation since then. Projects halted as there was no cash flow.

In September 2009, IL&FS was inducted as the principal promoter of Maytas Infra replacing Rajus, who still hold about 23 per cent in the company.

Since then, IL&FS worked on business plans, finalising a restructuring package, securing new orders to enhance profitability and strengthening internal processes and human resource talent within the company.

Maytas Infra will continue its focus on infrastructure sectors and also leverage EPC and BOT contracts across sectors, according to a release.

During the year, the company did not get any incremental credit and its net worth declined to Rs 163.19 crore as of March 31, 2009 as compared to Rs 652.84 crore the previous year. It reported a turnover of Rs 1,335 crore and a net loss of Rs 489.79 crore for the year ended March 31, 2009 as against Rs 1,637 crore and a net profit of Rs 99.64 crore, respectively the previous year due to lower level of operations last year.

As a fallout of Satyam episode, Maytas lost projects worth Rs 3,800 crore and bank guarantees worth Rs 495 crore invoked and vendors stopped supplies.

Maytas Infra, which is qualified for transportation, power, buildings and irrigation projects, bagged an order worth Rs 790 crore in November this year, its first major order after almost a year, from IL&FS Transportation Networks. The project entails four laning of Pune-Sholapur segment (104.06 km) on a design, build, finance, operate and transfer basis in 20 months.

The Company Law Board has allowed it to report quarterly accounts for the quarters ending September 2009, December 2009 and March 2010 by June 30, 2010.

The company's stocks settled at Rs 182.60, up 5.98 per cent from its previous close of Rs 172.30 on the Bombay Stock Exchange.